IN THE TANK

1 8 Y I N T H E T A N K T O M S L E I G H Words I wanted to blow up the tanks of words, the RPGs of words, the bayonets of words that had only one definition, one derivation, one root that went back before Indo-European or any other form of language, lingo, blather, and bullshit, no ‘‘dulce et decorum’’ – I hadn’t changed my throat to the throats of birds, all I had were my two hands and a pile of rubble to dig my foxhole in: and as I dug down, I came across old library books about Robert E. Lee, George Jackson, Malcolm X, the Hardy Boys, Winnie-thePooh , Bring ’Em Back Alive Frank Buck, the millions of words that were just beginning to take up arms: and when my hole was dug and the bombardment started, when exploding around my ears were bombs bursting in 1 9 R air, the rockets’ red glare, syllables like shrapnel scattering everywhere , every word was like a wound being probed for what went wrong – and how could I have missed it as a kid, each word a switchblade that if you pressed the button turned into a weapon? So don’t Sing, Muse, of arms and the man, sing of what the man was thinking as a kid sitting in the orchard in a butterfly chair, reading for the first time ‘‘Benito Cereno’’: up in the leaves the pecked bing cherries hid words putting on uniforms, words dressed as slavers, words got up as slaves, words who would know how to apologize – and so my foxhole in the middle of smoking buildings has become all these years later after almost everyone has died my refuge, my place of recuperation in this No-Man’s-Land where barbed-wire words strung in front of empty trenches fall silent for a little while so that I can hear in my own voice reading to myself as a child, Once upon a time . . . they lived happily ever after before the words start up again with their subtle, insistent drone, words that would know how to apologize even as they turn the knife. ≤ I picked up one of the clear plastic tubs of pitted dates, popped the lid o√ with my thumb, and shoved two in my mouth, savoring the sweet, thinking nothing of the risk because, after all, I’d shoplifted before. I couldn’t imagine a cop arresting me over such a small sum – sixty-nine cents! Besides, I’d run out of cash and I was hungry. But this was Baltimore, 1976, a city I’d been in for a few days, and where I’d come to finish up college (I was a two-time dropout already). I didn’t know that the city was in the midst of a heroin epidemic, that shoplifting was rampant, and store cops were on high alert. I had it in my head that I could insist I’d intended all along to pay at the cash register – and then I’d protest that I was new in town, the banks were closed on the weekend, and I’d left my money at home. So armed with this flimsiest of alibis, I gobbled half the dates as I walked around the aisles, ogling 2 0 S L E I G H Y all the food I had no money to buy, before the store cop grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked my arm behind my back. As he marched me down the bread aisle to the back of the store, I’ll never forget the look on a woman’s face – curious, shocked, then studiously going blank. Another woman glanced at us, then fixed her eyes on the loaves of bread stacked shelf above shelf into a pyramid. She refused to look at me as I stumbled past, my face drained white, my whole body gone rigid as I floated up near the ceiling tiles and looked down on myself, the cop, and the women. From the instant the cop grabbed me, I felt the same spaced-out terror as when I’d...